The finalists for the World Trade Center memorial can all trace influences from Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial. “As successful as Ms. Lin’s Vietnam memorial was, the eight finalists prove that it has become a crutch, rather than an inspiration, for American memorial architecture. Indeed, Ms. Lin’s aesthetic presence in the plans speaks volumes about the state of memorial design in America. On one hand, the continued presence of Lin-esque minimalism in American monuments points to the long-awaited emergence of an American memorial style; on the other, the finalists’ failure to move beyond the threshold she set more than two decades ago points to a severe lack of vision in the way Americans build memorials to tragedy.”